Mary Trump’s Publisher Gets Court to Lift Order Blocking Tell-All Book
(Bloomberg) -- Simon & Schuster Inc. got a green light -- for now -- to publish a tell-all memoir by President Donald Trump's niece after a New York appeals court lifted a temporary ruling that would have blocked the book's release.
The appeals court kept in place a temporary restraining order handed down earlier this week against Mary L. Trump, who wrote a damning memoir about the “toxic” Trump family, but lifted the TRO from her publisher.
The decision on Wednesday is a setback for the president's brother, Robert S. Trump, who sued to block the book claiming it violated a secrecy deal that was part of a 2001 legal settlement over the wills of the president's parents.
Mary Trump agreed as part of the 2001 settlement with Donald Trump, Robert Trump and other family members not to “directly or indirectly publish or cause to be published any diary, memoir, letter, story, photograph, interview, article, essay, account or description or depiction of any kind whatsoever” about their relationships, according to the complaint.
“While Ms. Trump unquestionably possesses the same First Amendment expressive rights belonging to all Americans, she also possesses the right to enter into contracts, including the right to contract away her First Amendment rights,” the appeals court said. “Unlike Ms. Trump, Simon & Schuster has not agreed to surrender or relinquish any of its First Amendment rights.”
Lack of Evidence
An appeals court judge, Alan Scheinkman, said the temporary restraining order against Mary Trump must also apply to her “agents,” though he declined to rule that Simon & Schuster is such an agent, citing a lack of evidence.
The decision isn't the end of the fight. A lower-court judge is set to hear arguments on July 10 on Robert Trump's request for a longer-lasting preliminary injunction that could block the book's publication indefinitely while the case is litigated.
Theodore Boutrous, Mary Trump's lawyer, said he will file a response in the lower court on Thursday in which he'll seek to get the restraining order lifted again.
“It is very good news that the prior restraint against Simon & Schuster has been vacated, and we look forward to filing our brief tomorrow in the trial court explaining why the same result is required as to Ms. Trump, based on the First Amendment and basic contract law,” Boutrous said in an emailed statement.
Simon & Schuster praised the upcoming book as a “work of great interest and importance to the national discourse.” The company said in a court filing Tuesday that about 75,000 copies of the book were printed and bound and that thousands had already been shipped.
“As all know, there are well-established precedents against prior restraint and pre-publication injunctions, and we remain confident that the preliminary injunction will be denied,” the company said in a statement.
Mary Trump's book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man,” which is due to be published on July 28, will include purported psychological observations about her “toxic” family, according to the lawsuit. It's also expected to reveal her role as a primary source for the New York Times's investigation into the president's taxes, and to detail her claim that the family's mistreatment of her father, Fred Trump Jr., contributed to his early death.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
-
Opinion | India at 38: From Innovation Overperformer to Innovation Powerhouse
India now has 453 VC-backed deep science startups, 18 of them late-stage, after 117 percent growth since 2020. Laurus Labs, at USD 9.3 billion, is the most valuable deep science company in any middle-income economy outside China.
-
Navigating Energy Crossroads: S Jaishankar's Call For Diversified Supply Chains At G20 Ministerial Meeting
As geopolitical fault lines continue to test maritime trade routes and commodity flows, Jaishankar's message remains pertinent: true economic resilience requires open markets, protected transit lines, and a genuine commitment to multilateral cooperation rather than coercion.
-
Indians Are Travelling, But Not Every Journey Is A Holiday | The Week In Whys
Pilgrims, patients and working women are the real travellers, and the system hasn't quite caught up with them.
-
Getting To Work Costs Women More | The Reason Why
It is not just about women paying more than men. It is about women paying much more in cities than in villages.
-
AI Bias In Investing Cannot Be Eliminated, But It Can Be Governed
Framing is a particularly important example as identical financial information presented in terms of gains rather than losses can lead an LLM to reach a different assessment.
-
Joining The Dots | Dark Skies, Steady Diya: Why Hope Holds This Diwali
With war, a weak rupee and foreign outflows weighing on sentiment, policymakers at the NDTV World Summit and market veterans at NDTV Profit Ignite: Diwali Edition offered the same advice: stay invested and filter out the noise.
-
The Curious Case of Equitas Small Finance Bank And A CEO Who Quit For Stock
PN Vasudevan believes persistent investor concerns over a perceived conflict of interest had become a governance overhang on Equitas Small Finance Bank's stock, even as the lender improved profitability and asset quality.
-
Talking Points This Week: AI Cash Burn, A Tiger Comeback And An India That Still Finds Its Own Path
India is not immune to higher oil or tighter global liquidity, yet its earnings base is broader, its domestic policy levers are still available.
-
Foreign Investors Own Half Of HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank. An LTCG Cut Could Matter Most Here
Foreign portfolio investors have US$115 billion parked in HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank. If the government cuts long-term capital gains tax, Jefferies says returning foreign money could land here first.
